I'm playing NL50 6max cash games on pokerstars right now. Regular tables, not zoom. A while ago I decided to stay away from zoom and stick to regular tables. I'm very happy about my decision.

General reasons:

• Table selection is the obvious one. If you play zoom, you can't choose your opponents, which sucks quite a bit if you're an average regular.
• Fishes are way worse at regular tables. I think this is huge. As you know, in zoom, if you have a bad hand preflop, you can simply fast fold and instantly get a new hand. Because of this, games are tighter in general. It is pretty easy to play tight at zoom because the action is so fast. But imagine if you're playing only one regular table (which many fishes are usually doing). Do you really want to do a lot of folding, especially if you're mainly just playing for fun? I don't think so. Because of this, there are quite a bit of 70 VPIP fishes at regular tables. Those player types simply don't exist in zoom pools.
• Table dynamics and gameflow are more present at regular tables, which I believe creates an advantage for observing regulars.

Personal reasons:

• Playing on autopilot strikes to me more often. Since the action is so fast, I tend to go on autopilot more often and make my decisions more quickly than usual, which is very much hurting me.
• Since my winrate is lower at zoom, the swings are more brutal. Variance is more cruel for breakeven/small winners. More consistent winning creates more enjoyable experience overall.

So yeah, I really think that regular tables are much better for me right now. If you're a breakeven/small winner in zoom, I suggest you try regular tables. Those are way softer imo, mainly because you get to play more versus weaker players and those weaker players are worse than zoom fishes.

Subscribed.

I like your posts in general and I like the format you are proposing. Posting hands, result etc, isn't that interesting since you won't do any different from other blogs.
Along with your thoughts on poker and like, you could post monthly or 2/3 months results, just to keep the cheer on.
I thought about making something similar for awhile, maybe you could inspire me.

I hope the best for your journey.

How to beat games filled with nitty regulars (NL50)?

The cool thing about playing versus nitty regulars is that you really don't have to do much to beat them. If someone is playing a very tight range preflop and doesn't really bluff postflop, it is very easy to play againts them. All you have to do is open wide againts them (since they fold a lot preflop) and make sure that you don't put in a lot of money postflop with marginal holdings.

I would say that the average regulars playstyle at NL50 is something like 23-24 VPIP and 19-20 PFR. When you look at mid stakes regulars (you can see some stats on RIO videos for example), you can see that most of them are playing with 27-29 VPIP and 20-22 PFR. This is a huge difference. Mid stakes regulars are also 3betting more and folding less to 3bets. What this all comes down to is that versus these nitty regulars, all you really have to do is steal and re-steal very aggressively preflop, and avoid putting a lot of money in postflop, especially on the river. If people are folding too much preflop and too much on the flop, it means that their turn and river ranges are super tight.

Also, turning hands into a bluff is really not a thing amongts NL50 regulars. All these factors make their river raising ranges, for example, VERY TIGHT.

A few tips for beating NL50:

• Steal a lot versus tight regulars. 3betting is also very profitable, especially BvB or versus BTN open.
• Keep in mind that when a tight regular gets to the river, he generally has a relatively tight range.
• Increase your sizings versus fishes. You should not stick to your standard sizings when playing versus a fish. You should be cbetting a lot bigger than you normally would with your strong hands. That way you can increase the pot more and make a lot bigger bets on the turn and on the river. That will increase your EV a lot.

In general, you really should be looking to exploit your villains all the time. This applies way more at NL50 than at NL200+ where people are generally more balanced and more likely to exploit you for your mistakes.

Check out $0.25/$0.50 Live Zoom Session part 1 & 2 by Cameron Couch. I think he has a great approach to these games that are filled with nitty regulars and weaker players.

People have big leaks and they are not really paying attention to you (given big player pool). What should be your approach? :)

Prioritizing is something that hasn't really been talked enough in the poker world in my opinion. So many players (including me) are focusing on things that aren't nearly as important as some other things, in which they still have huge leaks.

Making very basic mistakes from time to time can actually kill your entire winrate, even if you're a very good player when you're at your best. Let's say that you make 2 mistakes in every 1k hand period that are both worth 20 big blinds. Just two pretty big mistakes, 40bb in total. It can be stuff like missclick check on the river with a very strong hand versus a fish who is very passive and checkbacks a lot when checked to. That kind of mistake can be easily worth 20 big blinds or more. Another mistake can be just some stupid bluff you attempt on the river in a spot where you are trying to represent a hand that you can very rarely have and villain sees this and calls your raise with a very high frequency.

Those two small mistakes, which you probably just forget after a session, cost 40bb total. That's 4bb/100! I consider 4bb/100 to be a very solid winrate at any reasonable stake. Because of these two consistent mistakes you make in every 1k period your winrate drops to breakeven. And two mistakes like that are pretty easy to make if you think about it. You might do these because you're tired, you're playing too many tables or you lose your focus for a second and you missread the board, missclick or forget what happened previously in the hand.

Many people are making these constant mistakes because of the lack of focus basically. But they don't really do anything about it, because those mistakes are so obvious and you can just say that you don't do those mistakes again. But the chances are that you do, if you don't improve on your focus.

Instead of focusing on these very important things like focus, sleep, nutrition and table selection, many people are mainly focusing on these specific strategic concepts. How much are those improving your winrate? Maybe like 0,2bb/100? Cool, but if you're making these 20bb mistakes and decreasing your winrate by 4bb/100 because of the lack of focus, I don't think that those 0,2bb/100 edges are very benefitial for you.

Obviously I'm not saying that you shouldn't improve on those small edge things. I'm just saying that it's very important to know what are the most important things or the biggest leaks, and focus mainly on those.

Just one hour ago I was grinding and got distracted by something. Because of that, I timed out and folded JJ preflop. I wonder how costly that is!

How to play quads versus a fish

Flop I check because I want the original raises to cbet. On the turn I check because opponents have air very often and I want to induce them to bluff or hit something on the river. Also, if they have Ax, they will bet it, and I can check/raise.

On the river I pretty much have to bet. Once I get minraised, I choosed to make a huge raise, which I like a lot. Villain ended up calling with T6!

In a spot like this, it is extremely important to raise huge. I think that I could have gone even bigger. It'll boost your winrate a lot if you learn to identify these spots where you can overbet big for value versus a calling station.

Raising to 12-14 seems like a huge mistake. Make it 20+.

Really digging this format, awesome stuff keep it coming <3

Are you playing zoom ?

Goal setting

You should always have goals that are moving you forward. If you don't have any goals/plans, you're basically just living based on your mood, which is usually not the most progressive lifestyle.

Imagine that you don't have any goals or any plans. What does your daily life look like? It would be filled with things that you just happen to enjoy at that moment. There would not be any structure and you would never really go away from your comfort zone, where the progress happens. And the key to happiness is progress. This kind of lifestyle makes you unhappy in the long-run, because there's very little or no progress.

What happens when you set a goal with a commited mindset? You're basically forced to use your willpower to achieve that goal. If you don't have any specifically defined goals, you're not forced to use your willpower to make those things happen.

So you should definitely have goals. However, having too big or too many goals is as big of a mistake as not having goals at all! That's because you have a limited amount of willpower. If you're trying to use too much willpower, you'll be doomed to burnout and you'll not be able to get anything done anymore.

Set goals. Small ones at first, then increase once you feel comfortable achieving those small ones. If you try to do too much, you end up doing nothing and feeling miserable.

Keeping a journal has helped me quite a bit during the last two days. It has helped me to remember the concepts that I'm currently focusing on and kept my mind on things that are the most important to me right now.

I suggest writing things down, taking notes or keeping a journal! It'll help you a lot and it makes the concepts that you're thinking about more real and therefore it will be far more likely that you improve on those areas. You don't have to make your notes public, you can write just for you. I've decided to make this journal for everyone to see because it adds accountability, and maybe there's some value for someone. But after all, I'm the one who gets the most out of this.

So yeah, I like the format of this journal and it suits me. As I said, I will probably not post results on this journal, just because this journal is really not about my monetary results, but more like a collection of thoughts and wisdom of mine that I'm making more concrete by writing it down. Although I might post my NL50 graph once I've grinded enough hands for it to matter and once I'm ready to make a recap of my NL50 games and ready to move up at stakes. But that'll probably take a while since I want to have a very healthy bankroll and strong enough evidence that I can beat NL50 with a solid winrate.

Recap (for myself):

• No zoom, stick to regular tables
• Play loose versus nitty regulars, be careful on later streets (tight play on earlier streets makes turn and river ranges tight and strong).
• First priority is to eliminate all the biggest mistakes that are caused by tilt and a lack of focus.
• Big sizings for value versus a fish
• Set goals that are manageable for you.

I recently watched a video from Tommy Angelo about patience. And I figured out a couple of things.

Poker, compared to other games, is really not about one hand, because there is variance and then there are hand ranges. If you call on the river and win, it doesn't mean that you made a good call just because you won. You might have had the best hand this time, but maybe you made a losing call versus villains range! This is a somewhat unique element. In games such as league of legends, darts, bowling, football or anything like that, the best player/team will pretty much always win. This sounds obvious, but think about it from the perspective of patience.

Let's say you're playing a game where the better player will (almost) always win. You play with your friend who is better than you and he kicks your ass. After that, you spend 3 months practising very hard while your friend is doing nothing to work on his game. You come back after 3 months and you take a rematch. This time you win, because you're better.

Let's say the game you guys were playing was poker. The 3 month practising period would have had a very very small effect on the results of your rematch, because of variance. Think about the amount of patience this requires from you! You spend 3 months working super hard while your friend has done nothing, and yet that has very little to do with the result of your next session.

You really have to be in a patient mood to play your A-game in poker. What I've discovered is that when I'm feeling impatient, poker feels boring, I'm not playing my best and I kinda want to just quit playing and perhaps play some other game that rewards you instantly if you make a better move than your opponent.

When I'm feeling heated, egoistic or impatient, I'm pretty much always choosing league of legends or some other game over poker. Why? Because I get an instant reward if I'm better than my opponent.

I think this is a concept that you should be aware of so that you can recognize the times when you're feeling impatient and therefore don't feel very motivated to play poker, because "what's the point, your skill has quite little to do with the results that you can see instantly."*

This is interesting, because on the other hand we have to be somewhat competitive to beat our opponents. But it's not the same kind of competitiveness that you have on other games. I think it goes one step ahead intellectually.

So, as poker players, we should be very patient and zen. That will be a challenge for me for sure!

I haven't had much to write about lately, mainly because right now I'm trying to focus on the basics to improve my poker(life), so there haven't been many interesting concepts or ideas in my mind, just pretty basic stuff.

I'm still strongly believe that it's all about the basics, focus and consistency. Everything else comes second. If you're focusing all your time figuring out all the small and specific things then your improvement will be very slow. Mainly because those things simply don't really matter.

Today I played like a two hour session. It started well and I was playing pretty well and focused, but then after 30 minutes I got distracted and I lost my focus. I realized this pretty quickly, turned off my phone and started to focus purely on playing the best poker I possibly could at that moment.

It's disgusting how big difference there is between my game when I'm focused and when I'm not. It's so ridicilous. It's insane.

You can't focus on small edges if you're not focused and consistent as a player. Simply because all the spews you make during those periods when you're not focused will kill all the small edges you gain at times when you happen to be focused.

I'm just kind of repeating myself here, but that's just because I really don't have much else to write about right now, and because it's just so important. Focusing on basics is the most important thing for me right now and I don't want to confuse myself right now by focusing on multiple complex theories and concepts.

So right now I have a project: I'm trying to live more healthy and build good habits that will improve my focus and my overall happiness. Eating better, fixing my sleeping schedule, having proper breaks from poker, exercise, reading and meditation. Just slowly building these habits, brick by boring brick.

Start from the basics. Brick by brick. Be patient but not lazy.

Subbed, and getting a lot of motivation and ideas too.
Please keep it up!

For the past 4 days I've been very conscious about my focus at the tables. I've been focusing on focusing, basically. And the things I've been focusing on focusing on are creative use of sizings, hand reading, my own perceived ranges and combining all these things. I'm yet to have a losing day.

I stopped listening to music while playing, because I felt it was a bit of a distraction for my focus and I wasn't able to focus on the things I wanted to focus on as effectively as I wanted to while listening something other than my own thoughts. I've been able to hand read more effectively and I've had very solid results over this short term period.

I'm the type of player who knows a lot more than I can execute at the tables, meaning that I can come up with very high quality answers if I get a chance to think for some time, but at the tables my conclusions, and therefore decisions, aren't nearly as good as the conclusions that I would come up with when I'm focused and have more time. Therefore, especially for a player like me, having a solid focus is crucial.

It's is so crazy how thin of a line there is between my A-game and my C-game, and it's very hard to notice the difference in-game, but that's what I've been trying to do lately, with quite a bit of success I would say.

I have shook off the idea that I can just play auto pilot and win because I'm so much smarter than my opponents. I had this mindset for quite some time, but I definitely don't believe that anymore, now that I've been doing quite a bit of conscious work and observation around these things. Knowing is much easier than executing. Knowing alone doesn't do anything.

I was reading A New Earth By Ekhart Tolle. I was reading this chapter: I couldn't help but to put down a book, stare at the wall mouth wide open and think "holy shit....". It was a chapter called "Giving up a role". It starts with these words (not exactly these words, I'm translating. My copy is in finnish):

Always doing the things required, without making a role out of it - there's an
inevitable life lesson for all of us. There is so much more power in our actions, when we manage to act for the activity itself rather than for the sake of protecting, intensifying and obeying our role-identity.

Fuck man. I was just mind-blown by this. For so long I've been struggling with having an identity as a "poker player" or "a person who will work hard to succeed at poker". Having this identity is not necessarily bad, and it can definitely get things done, but it can cause so much suffering, especially for a guy like me who really hates losing and wants to prove for others and himself that I can do this. This mindset can be very dangerous, especially in a game like poker, where the most important factor for short-term results is basically how many strong hands you can make (your mood is basically determined by variance).

Try to do things just for the sake of doing them instead of feeding your (un)conscious role-identity. Obeying a certain role-identity can cause a lot of suffering, and that is especially true with poker I feel.

Don't do things for you. You are already good enough, you don't need to boost your role-identity to become an extraordinary being. You already are one.

Namaste.

Sit down for a second and think about your life so far. What have you done and what have you accomplished? How much effort, dedication and time have you put into poker? What about physical health? Social skills? Knowledge?

When I personally think about these questions, I come to a conclusion that I'm exactly where I deserve to be in every area in my life. The amount of time, dedication and effort very much equals the results that I've gotten and the situation that I'm in now! I'm sure you guys will come to a similar conclusion. If not, the chances are that you're not being honest with yourself.

With poker, I have done quite a bit to become a better player over the years. I have talked about poker, thought about poker, made calculations and watched tons of videos. I've also played a lot. But have I done enough for me to become a winning mid stakes regular? No I haven't. If I had, I would be a winning mid stakes regular.

There is this 10k hour rule. It suggests that it takes 10k hours to become a master of something. I think I have used like 2k hours for poker in my lifetime. So I still have 8k to go!

Am I proud of what I've accomplished and how good of a player I have become during these 2k hours I've put in, with all the mental blocks and frustrations that I've had? Yes, I'm very proud. Do I want more? Definitely. I get very excited when I think about how much I can improve during my next 2k/4k/6k/8k hours of dedication to poker!

I am brand new on this site. Yours is the first thread I have read through in it's entirety. It is so good! So right on what its like for me. I have so many moments where I make a mistake, and later think, "I knew that! Where the hell was it when I needed it?"
The notion of "focusing on focusing" is something I will include right away! And also "Giving up the role." Thanks for all the excellent thoughts! I'll be watching your thread closely!

I'm currently reading Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins. According to this book, there are 3 main principles that can help us to increase the quality of our lives:

1. Raise your standards

Write down all the things that you will demand from yourself from now on, and don't settle for less! We all have standards, things that we allow ourselves to do or not do. For most of us, these standards are unconscious. Become conscious about your standards and raise them! Decide what you will not tolerate from yourself and what you absolutely demand from youself, no matter what.

2. Change your limiting beliefs

This is probably even more important than the first principle, just because if we don't believe we can reach our standards, we're already sabotaging ourselves. Quoting the book:

Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what's possible and what's impossible, what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought, and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief system is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives. We must develop a sense of certainty that we can and will meet the new standards before we actually do.

3. Change your strategy

This one usually works out for itself once we implement the first two principles. But we do have to be conscious of certain things: are we studying enough compared to the amount of hours we put into playing? Are we learning from the best (RIO coaches)? Are we taking proper breaks? Are we keeping an open mind and trying new things? Are we doing different types of training when we're working on our game? A great strategy with implementation and consistency creates results.

-

The main message here is that by becoming conscious of our standards, limiting beliefs and strategies, we can actually change these things for ourselves and become better far more quickly! Be honest with yourself and become conscious, and then just make the changes required.

nice read m8 :) is ur sn out?

I find it interesting that you and dddog have stopped listening to music and find it to be distracting. What kind of music do you typically listen to?

I find that when I listen to Enya radio(I welcome to trolling) I stay much more relaxed and in a zen state. I keep it at a very low volume, just enough to be background noise and it helps me out actually more so than playing in pure silence.

Lately I've been breaking my own rule and playing zoom! I have two excuses for it: first is that I don't have my second monitor anymore, and therefore table selecting is a bit more distracting and hard. Secondly, I feel like I've improved a lot lately and I feel like I have a good edge, even at times when the reg/fish ratio is poor.

I feel very good about playing right now. I think I'm doing a lot of stuff that gives me an edge over most NL50 regulars (gaining more EV by using sizings more creatively and doing some creative lines at spots where regs aren't expecting it...). I also enjoy grinding a lot right now, mainly because of the things I've learned from Ekhart Tolles books and the fact that I'm improving as a player.

Still focusing on focusing and getting volume. Those are two main goals for me right now. Off the tables I'm mainly watching RIO videos and talking about hands with my study group, I find these two to be really effective right now.

If I succeed at my goals and keep my focus and volume, this month/next 100k hands will be very good!

Read books! If you read already, great. If you don't, start doing so. Knowledge is power. Tony Robbins read a lot of books to get a better understanding of people. Mark Cuban read a lot to get an advantage over his competitors in the business world. I'm gonna quote him:

"...I would continually search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, three bucks for a magazine, twenty bucks for a book. One good idea would lead to a customer or a solution, and those magazines and books paid for themselves many times over. Some of the ideas I read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.

Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn't want it."

Don't be like most people. Get knowledge and new perspectives. And don't just read one book. Reading multiple books/magazines/articles will create a brainstorm in your brain and will make you come up with your own conclusions and perceptions.

Reading is a pretty new hobby for me, so I haven't read a ton of books yet. But here are some of my favourites so far:

Ekhart Tolle - The Power of Now

Ekhart Tolle - A New Earth

Ekhart Tolle talks about the power of the present moment and how our egos and pain bodies are making us miserable. Really important books for me. These books made me a lot happier and I discovered ways to reduce anger, frustration and all the other emotions that our minds are constantly creating.

Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich

This book contains a secret that has made fortunes for a lot of people who Napoleon Hill had analyzed over the years.

Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends & Influence People

This book contains three fundamental techniques in handling people, six ways to make people like you, twelve ways to win people to you way of thinking and nine ways to change people without arousing resentment. I'm not naturally that good socially, so this book gave me a lot of new knowledge about how to handle people, what they do and do not want to hear etc.

Mark Cuban - How to Win at the Sport of Business

This is not exactly a book, but rather a compilation of his most popular blog posts put into a one paperback. In the book Mark talks about his early years, shares his business and life philosophies and gives advice for people who are at the start of their journey. Great read, Go Mavericks!

If you have read some good books, go ahead and share them with us! Topics can be anything, I'm young and interested in a lot of different topics.

Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin is my favorite book. Check him out on Tim Ferris' podcast if you want to get a taste for Waitzkin -- he's a beast.

Change your vocabulary. Cut off all the words and phrases that aren't helping you to maintain a good state. It's easy to say that words are just words and they don't mean much, but the words aren't just letters in a row; we all have an emotional tie to words, so the way we use language generally determines how we feel. And how we feel makes all the difference in the world.

Here are some words and phrases that I'm going to cut off from my vocabulary or atleast avoid in most cases:

"Should" - This word is bullshit for obvious reasons. Use this less and replace your shoulds with "I must" and "I will".

"Fuck", "hell" and other cursing words - Cursing is very very damaging IF used to describe negative feelings and events. However, I think cursing can even be benefitial if used correctly. I like to use cursing as a way of making things fun and to create a non-bullshit state for myself and others. The key thing here is to use cursing words in a positive, determined and a funny way instead of negative way. These words have a lot of power in terms of creating emotion, so you better use these to reinforce the good emotions instead of the bad ones.

"That doesn't make any sense" - This is a phrase that I personally use way too often and it is a personal weakness of mine. The reason this phrase is bad is that it reinforces the habit of not listening or trying to understand others. And also because it's very rarely true: 99,9% of the phrases have some sense in them, we just might not see it right away. So from now on, everytime I feel like saying "that doesn't make any sense" or something similar, I can immediately tell that I'm being too arrogant and I'm not being open-minded. In this scenario I will (I was writing "should", but that would've been awkward given the should section above) try to understand other persons point of view and find out the things that I agree with.

"I'm depressed/disgusted/furious/angry etc." - If you use strong words to describe your state, your state will become stronger. So instead of using strong words such as "furious", replace them with lighter words such as "a bit annoyed". This will make your state less intense. I'm sure there are a lot of good words for this use, but english is not my first language so you can probably figure out the right words for you way better than I can (and also because different words have different meanings for different people, obviously).

Also, make boring or scary things sound more fun with your words! If you don't feel like "going to the gym to work-out" why don't you go and "fullfil your physiological goals to make your life fucking awesome in every single area?!" You get the idea.

Become very conscious with your vocabulary and make the required changes to change your state for the better, so that you can kick some ass at the poker table or anywhere!

Okey, the month is almost over! My results have been very good, but the volume hasn't been the greatest. I haven't managed my time very well and I've wasted a lot of it, so that is why I'm going to set myself some goals for the next month:

• I will play 4 hours / 4000 hands per day, with one day off per week. So about 25-26 days of playing poker, 100k+ hands total.

• I will make default preflop ranges for every action (3betting ranges, defending ranges etc). This will help me to make my B and C game better since I don't have to focus on simple preflop decisions that much and it clears some space in my mind. It will also give me a better perspective on how my range looks like on certain spots and I can play according to that.

After the month is over, I will probably post my NL50 graph here and prepare for taking a shot at NL100 zoom, if the month goes well!

We're halfway through april already. I've been slacking quite a bit with volume tbh. I have some catching up to do.

Tony Robbins says that people overestimate what you can accomplish in 1 year, but underestimate what they can do in 10 years. I certainly think this is true and I also think that this applies on a smaller scale, like 1 day and 30 days, 6 months and 4 years etc.

It really is fascinating how much you can accomplish long-term. But short-term, you can't do that much! Poker is a perfect example because in one day, your result is very heavily affected by variance whereas after 100 days, the amount of variance has decreased a ton. Assuming that you played reasonable amount of hands.

I think I have a problem with my expectations on what I can accomplish in one day, one week, one month or any short period of time. On a surface it's easy to realize how little you can actually do in one day, relatively speaking. But unconsciously, I do think I have very unrealistic expectations and I'm very biased.

No matter what I do short-term, I don't really feel much joy when I accomplish that particular goal or task, and that lowers my motivation to do anything. Because what's the point when everything you do is so little anyway and doesn't really even matter? That causes the fact that I don't do very much, and that hurts my long-term results a lot.

I do feel joy about my long-term results, but at the same time, I know that those results could be a lot better. It is very interesting to see how much I've actually accomplished in poker with not that much work! I have pushed myself, studied and played a lot of hands, but I could've done a lot more. All I've really done is that I've stuck around for many years now and that has lead me to this point. A lot of work wasn't really required. Where would I be if I actually worked hard?

So basically, I'm alright and my long-term results are decent, but I lack the motivation to do things short-term because of how small these short-term tasks seem. What's the cure?

Realize that at the end of the day, you can only do your best at any given moment, and at any given moment, there's only that one step you have to take. And with time, these small steps build up to big things!

And also, start celebrating small victories. Most of us set long-term goals, but we must not forget to set short-term ones. You could argue that short-term goals are more important, yet we don't really pay attention to those. Short-term goals are way more realistic, because at the end of the day, the only reality is now, in the present moment. So start focusing more on what's right in front of you, and rejoice the small victories.

Oh gosh, it's been a very poor month in terms of productivity. I've been procrastinating a lot and I haven't reached my volume goals. Results have been very good tho, I'm not sure if I've been lucky or improved a lot, probably the combination of those two things.

I've been trying to form new habits, which hasn't really worked out very well. I thought why that is, and I came to a conclusion that my approach has been wrong. Instead of forming new habits, I think the way to go for me is to break my old habits instead! I have a lot of bad habits, mainly with youtube, netflix, games and also with nutrition to some degree. It's really an uphill battle with all the bad habits that I keep falling back to. From now on I will focus on breaking the bad habits and setting limits for myself. After that, I can start to think about how I want to use my time instead. I have to be very conscious about how I use my time and form new habits that way. Instead of always choosing between doing something productive and something that is easy, I think I should start to limit the amount of hours I allow myself to use for non-productive things, so that I don't have to fight with the urge of doing something fun all the time. Fighting againts bad habits is really tough, but setting limits for yourself will certainly help.

At the end of the month, I will post my NL50 graph and prepare for moving up, if everything goes well!

I've already played a few sessions of NL100 zoom, feeling great about it. It's definitely tougher than NL50 in a sense that there are some regulars that don't let you get away with stuff, but it's still very beatable. I've already seen a lot of weaker players and some weird plays by regulars.

My plan is to play NL100 zoom for now with 2-3 tables at a time. I go back to NL50 if I lose 10 buy-ins at NL100. The rest of the month and the next month will be interesting for sure!

Here's my graph and stats from the last two months or so from playing NL50 zoom:

Sorry about the small image. :P

The first half of the graph is pretty much breakeven. I'm not really sure why, I think it was just the combination of variance and autopilot game. The second half of the graph is much better, and that's probably because of the combination of variance, confidence and focusing on what's really important.

I feel like I have a very good grasp on how to improve my game from now on and I'm very excited for the future. I am confident and I really do enjoy poker right now.

Cliff notes for the remaining and the next month:

• Focus on the right things.
• Cut off distractions.
• Keep things enjoyable and rejoice small victories.
• Mark hands actively and go over them regularly.
• If a downswing comes, keep calm stay focused on the game. It'll pass.

Until next time!

And since it's monday: Hymn For The Weekend

Nice blog / gl on nl100! This might be lame question / it is but what are most important things to beat nl50? (breakevenish 50 zoomer here)

Hey Samu, how is NL100 going? I'm sorry but I'm curious haha I hope you are crushing it